"I know what survival requires." Richard's voice dropped lower. "I have done what survival required for thirty years. I have made deals with men who disgusted me. I have smiled at enemies and broken bread with predators. I have done all of it so that my family...." He stopped. Swallowed. "So that they would never have to."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was filled with everything Richard had not said in the boardroom, everything he had held back while Dakota stood beside Kade and watched her family fall.
"But she," he continued, and now his voice had changed, now there was something beneath it that might have been wonder or might have been poison, "she made her choice without a single glance backward. Without hesitation. Without...." He stopped again. Shook his head slowly. "She did not even ask."
"Ask what?"
